


The Army Man

by mylittlesyn



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Military, Original Fiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26840992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittlesyn/pseuds/mylittlesyn
Summary: Short story one shot from a class I took.
Kudos: 1





	The Army Man

_I held up my M16A4 and looked around. I peered around the edge of the house we were shielding behind. Everything still seemed to be clear. I looked back at my unit to see my specialist, Paul. His leg blown off from the bombing… I had instructed Jeff to shove his fingers up his femoral artery, wrap the rest of what’s left up and gave him a shot for the pain. We were all anxiously awaiting the arrival for the evac to save Paul, but he was losing a lot of blood… “How you holding up man?”_

_“Doing the best I can sergeant.” Paul said looking paler with every second that went by._

_“Well you hang in there, I need you to make it and that’s an order.” I decided to check around the corner again after hearing Paul chuckle. I looked and saw a young girl walking slowly this way. She appeared to be about 8 years old. She looked strangely like my wife… That honey colored hair and those dark deep brown eyes… Maybe I’m hallucinating things with all this heat. Maybe I just miss my sweet Valary. She started to get too close. I shouted for her to stand back in my broken Arabic, but she didn’t listen. I shouted in English but she didn’t listen. She kept creeping up towards us slowly and I knew what my training was telling me to do. I was to shoot her dead to evade potential threats. But I couldn’t, so I shot at the floor instead in hopes of scaring her away. I watched as she ran scared having dropped what appeared to be bandages behind her. ___

__“Shh… It’s ok… You’re at home,” John’s wife said to him while she was caressing his arm in attempt to calm him down. “You keep getting more and more nightmares… Is everything ok?”_ _

__John looked into his wife’s eyes with the light that was seeping in through the blinds from the street light outside the front of their white-picket-fenced house. Their house didn’t actually have a white picket fence, but it might as well have. He looked in her eyes and saw a little glimpse of sadness within the worry that filled them. Yes, it is true his nightmares were occurring more and more frequently. John also could see how much this was starting to get to his wife, and how much it was worrying her._ _

__“You were fine at first. You were your normal semi-conscious sleeping self. I woke up in the middle of the night, and I felt you twitching… I tried to soothe you…” She began to tear up. “You just kept twitching and then you just snapped and woke up.”_ _

__“I didn’t hurt you did I?” John asked his wife as he held her face and wiped her tears. He caressed both of her cheeks and kissed her forehead._ _

__“No, of course not.”_ _

__She said it as though it hasn’t happened before, and that really bothered John. He never wanted to hurt her; he loved her. She had stuck with him while he was in the army and even after coming home. He knew things must’ve been hard for his wife. He also knew that there’s been plenty of strain placed on the relationship. He looked back into her dark brown eyes and smoothed his hand across her curves as they both laid facing each other on the bed. He started from the bottom up because he liked how many curves there were to her near-hourglass figure. He stopped at her cheek and ran his fingers through her light brown hair. “You know better than to be around me when I’m twitching like that. You know what has happened to you after the twitching stops. It’s not just about your safety anymore; we have the baby to think about, too.”_ _

__He saw her look down and could see how she was disappointed in herself. “You’re right. That was wrong of me. I just worry so much about you.”_ _

__John knew she would always put everyone else’s needs and wants before her own. He loved and hated that about her. He loved how good it made her, but he also hated how much doing this would hurt her. He held her face to make sure she was looking straight at him; he did it to show her how serious he was about this._ _

__“I will be fine. I will always be fine. You need to put yourself first, and the only thing you should ever put before yourself is in here,” he said as he pointed to her stomach._ _

__“I know… I’m working on it.”_ _

__“Well work faster.”_ _

__“It’s not that easy! I’ve lived this way my entire life.” She sat up beginning to get angry._ _

__“I realize that, but again, it’s not just you to think about anymore. We have a child on the way too.” He started to rub her back to try and calm her down. He didn’t mean to sound like a dick, and he knew she realized that. He simply wanted her to not hurt herself by worrying so much about everyone else. He recalled how he would often say “I don’t give a fuck” and she would respond with “well I give a fuck. I give all the fucks!”_ _

__John looked at her, but she was facing forward. “Hey, let’s just go to bed. You and my baby are going to need the rest.”_ _

__“Ok,” she said as she laid back down on her side facing away from him. John placed his hand over her stomach and one underneath the pillow her head was resting on and laid down up against her. He could tell she was slightly angry still, but after a minute she finally laced the hand resting on her stomach with her own and held it up to her chest as she does every night. He thought it was almost like she was trying to hold him close to her heart._ _

__“I saw her in my dream,” John said to Valary._ _

__“Who did you see?”_ _

__“I saw our daughter” John told her as he took his hand back and felt his wife’s stomach. “She had your hair and your beautiful eyes,” he told her while caressing her stomach._ _

__Valary turned around to face John. She reached over him, nearly pushing him off the bed with her big stomach, to turn on the light. Valary took John’s hand and held it closely. John began to grow nervous and anxious over the seriousness he felt. “I think you need to go to therapy.”_ _

__“I can’t go to therapy.” John could feel the anxiety start to get worse. He began to panic as all of the horrible experiences his friends had had rushed through his head. He remembered the exposure therapy. John got up out of bed, and began pacing. “I’m sorry I just can’t do that. I can’t go back. I can’t go there again.”_ _

__“John please sit down and look at me.” John sat down in a chair he pulled up in front of his wife whom was sitting on the bed. He took both of her hands in his and looked at her. He really looked at her. He looked at her so intently as a way to bring himself back down from the place his mind had ran off to. “Your nightmares have been getting worse, and you have been more anxious than usual lately. I can imagine part of it is that you’re becoming a father, but you still have issues you need to work out.”_ _

__“I know, and I get that. I just can’t go back there…”_ _

__“Look, no one says that you are going to be put through exposure therapy. Just take the therapy slowly. Take it one session at a time. You don’t have to talk to them about anything you don’t want to. They can’t make you say anything you’re not ready to talk about yet.” What Valary was saying seemed to be getting through to John. His breathing had returned to normal, and Valary continued: “I know you don’t want to put on that stupid virtual reality helmet that takes you back to Iraq, but they wouldn’t make you do it unless they truly thought it would help.”_ _

__John began to tense up again at the thought of being placed through exposure therapy. It was one of the few things that absolutely terrified him. John looked down as he got lost in his own thoughts slowly getting more and more tense._ _

__“John…” Valary said as she placed her hand on his cheek. “Look at me.” John did as he was told resembling the military man he will always be. “You told me there was only one thing that I needed to put before myself” Valary grabbed John’s hand and placed it on her stomach. “Do it for her John. Do it for her.”_ _

__John thought about the girl he had seen in his dream. He thought it was more like a dream disguised as a nightmare. He thought it was a dream because he got to see his daughter. He thought about how if that was her daughter and how he shot at her. He felt ashamed and horrified. He wanted to make sure that the strain that was put on his and Valary’s relationship was not put on the relationship he had with his daughter. He looked at Valary. His sweet and loving Valary. He wanted her to be happy, but most importantly decided that he wanted his daughter to be happy._ _

__“Ok. I’ll go. I’ll make an appointment in the morning.” John saw how happy he just made Valary. So happy in fact, that she began crying tears of joy._ _

__“Thank you.”_ _

__“Now let’s go to sleep.” John turned off the light and got back into bed. He placed his arm around his daughter only to have his wife move it up to her heart. The military man and the wife rest their heads as they await for the day their daughter will lie in her new bed._ _


End file.
